Until recently, as the tipping, either a colored or a white piece of paper cut to size has been used to wrap the mouthpiece region. Lately, the tipping has also been provided with signs or logos analogously to satinizing and embossing signs or authentication features on packaging foils. In the following, authentication features, signs, words, logotypes or the like will be called “logos”.
According to the prior art, tippings are embossed offline, i.e. not in time with a packing line for cigarettes where tobacco products are supplied on one side and finished, packaged cigarette packets are output on the other side. In this process, a device having two embossing rollers is used whose width is, compared to embossing innerliners relatively great and between which a relatively wide foil strip is passed on which multiple tipping strips, generally at least three, are simultaneously embossed. The strips are subsequently separated and shipped to the operators of packing lines.
Embossing tippings in an offline process with wide embossing rollers and multiple tipping strips offers the advantage, among others, that the foil is not subject to warping and the risk of a pitching movement of the roller is small, but the advantages would prevail if both tippings and wrapping foils for a number of further applications could be embossed online. Also, in addition to the far greater flexibility of the entire packing process, a superior precision of the embossing operation results.
On the other hand, a device for embossing foils according to the preamble of claim 1 is disclosed in the EP 1 867 470 A1 to the same applicant. In FIG. 10, 10A rollers are shown that comprise only few logos and therefore, as shown in the drawings, there is a possibility that the embossing is not totally even over the whole surface.
A further device for embossing foils is disclosed in EP 2 027 994 A2 to the same applicant, with zone with logos that are comparatively small. Increasing the zones of logos, with only few logos, resp. teeth can lead to situations where the embossing is not even over the surface, resulting in a loss of quality.